Syria Hardens Its Response to Rebels in Damascus Clashes

A child was treated last week after a bombing in Qusayr, Syria.Credit
Giulio Piscitelli

BEIRUT, Lebanon — Tensions escalated in Damascus on Tuesday as clashes between the Syrian Army and rebels near the city center extended into a third day, with government forces throwing a security cordon around some embattled neighborhoods, firing from helicopters and reinforcing the number of tanks on the streets.

The urban combat overshadowed international diplomacy aimed at halting the Syria conflict, which intensified ahead of a United Nations Security Council vote scheduled for Wednesday on whether to extend the mission of 300 United Nations monitors, who have basically been trapped in their hotel rooms by the violence since last month, their work suspended.

There was also new evidence, reported by Israel’s intelligence chief, that President Bashar al-Assad was moving troops into Damascus from Syria’s border with the disputed Golan Heights territory held by Israel, a possible sign of the seriousness of the fighting shaking neighborhoods at Mr. Assad’s doorstep.

The epicenter of the Damascus fighting remained an area in the capital’s southwest where street battles first erupted on Sunday, particularly the Midan neighborhood where rebel fighters concentrated after Mr. Assad’s forces chased them from surrounding quarters.

Midan is one of the oldest, more traditional quarters, a labyrinthine patchwork of narrow streets and old stone houses that attracted the rebel fighters partly because the army’s heavy weaponry is difficult to maneuver in the neighborhood.

But it is best known for the bustling Jazmateyeh food market, packed with popular restaurants and food shops, and the go-to address for Damascenes seeking the city’s famous honey-pistachio pastries. With the holy month Ramadan looming, when such foods are popular for the sunset feast to break the daily fast, the fighting in Midan suddenly threw the quarter’s traditional role into question.

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A bombing last month left the center of Qusayr in rubble. Government forces erected a security cordon in areas of Damascus.Credit
Giulio Piscitelli

In fact, Damascenes, having seen residents of other cities where fighting raged over the past 16 months flee to the capital, were suddenly casting about, alarmed about where they could turn should the fighting spread. “People from other areas sought refuge in Damascus — where would the people of Damascus go now?” one activist said.

The daily death toll compiled by the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a British-based group with links to activists around Syria, included a significant number from Damascus. The 16 victims were mostly from Qaboun, the northern suburb where activists said shelling could still be heard overnight. Shelling was also reported in other Syrian cities including Idlib, Homs and Hama.

Despite other fighting in Qaboun, plus sweeping statements from some rebel fighters that the ultimate struggle for Damascus had commenced, numerous opposition members suggested it was basically more intense skirmishing in a limited number of neighborhoods that had first erupted on Sunday.

“The battle for Damascus has not started,” said Abu Raed, a coordinator in Qaboun for the Free Syrian Army, the coalition of rebel fighters, who was interviewed in Turkey and did not use his full name for safety reasons. “It is more ebb and flow; these skirmishes are just a test as our fighters infiltrate then withdraw.”

The government was taking it seriously, however, with one video posted online showing tank and troop reinforcements rolling into Damascus and activists reporting more tanks entering Midan. Another showed a pickup truck with more than a dozen shabiha, the militiamen deployed by the government to intimidate restive neighborhoods. In Jerusalem, Maj. Gen. Aviv Kochavi, Israel’s military intelligence chief, told a parliamentary committee that the Syrian government had withdrawn forces from the Golan Heights to redeploy them in Damascus. He also said satellite images showed that Mr. Assad was directing artillery at highly populated regions and acting “extremely brutally, which displays their desperation and indicates they are unable to find more efficient solutions to pacify the uprisings.”

Indeed, the government seemed prepared to employ the same tactics in and around Midan that it had in other cities like Homs and Hama, where it briefly lost control — isolating them, waiting for the rebels’ ammunition to run low and then pounding them into submission.

But that is a riskier, more fraught policy in Damascus because it is such a symbolic prize and the government has tried to use the veneer of stability there to project the impression of nationwide control.

Elias Hanna, a retired Lebanese officer and military analyst, said the fighting in Damascus was important for three reasons: control is Mr. Assad’s main pillar; attacking in the capital indicates the rebels have strengthened; and maintaining calm there will preoccupy elite troops that the government might have deployed elsewhere.

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A frame from a video released by antigovernment activists showed Syrian army troops in central Damascus on Monday.Credit
Shaam News Network, via Reuters

“Damascus is a symbol, it is the center of gravity of the Syrian regime, so this has psychological, moral, military and political consequences,” Mr. Hanna said. “This is a war of attrition. The Free Syrian Army has a hit-and-run strategy. This is urban warfare. It favors the rebel forces and not the conventional forces.”

But Mr. Hanna was also dismissive of rebel claims that the end was near. “We are seeing changes, but it is still not decisive,” he said.

In Washington, Jeffrey White, a former Defense Intelligence Agency intelligence officer and specialist on the Syria military, said Tuesday that sustained combat between government troops and the rebels had spread to nine of the country’s 14 provinces.

Mr. White, a military analyst at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, said clashes could exceed 400 this month, versus about 250 in June, according to the opposition’s local coordinating committees. “The regime is now fighting a 360-degree war,” Mr. White said. He said all 13 of the Syrian Army’s combat divisions were engaged in suppressing rebel attacks.

The official Syrian news media concentrated their reports on what was happening in the Midan neighborhood, saying Syrian security forces were pursuing “armed terrorist groups” — the government’s catchall description for the opposition — and inflicting heavy losses.

Witnesses said the government had deployed a huge security presence in Damascus, isolating embattled neighborhoods. Activists in the Qaboun suburb reported that helicopter gunships were firing at fighters and that one chopper had been shot down. The claim could not be independently corroborated.

Kofi Annan, the special Syria envoy for the United Nations and the Arab League whose peace plan remains paralyzed, pleaded for support during a visit to Russia, the Syrian government’s most important foreign backer. But there was no indication that Russia, a veto-wielding member of the Security Council, was prepared to accept a Western-sponsored resolution that would threaten President Assad with enforceable sanctions if he does not carry out the peace plan as promised three months ago.

Representatives of the Syrian National Council, the leading opposition group in exile, said an enforceable Security Council resolution was the only way to save Mr. Annan’s peace plan from collapse. Bassma Kodmani of the council’s executive committee said failure would be a “blank check to continue the violence.”

Reporting was contributed by Hwaida Saad from Istanbul, J. David Goodman and Rick Gladstone from New York, Isabel Kershner from Jerusalem, Eric Schmitt from Washington, and an employee of The New York Times from Damascus, Syria.

A version of this article appears in print on July 18, 2012, on page A6 of the New York edition with the headline: Syrian Army Hardens Its Response to Rebel Clashes in Damascus. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe